Frontiers of Anthropology

This blog is to encorporate discussions on Lost Continents, Catastrophism, The origin of Modern Humans and the Out of Africa theory, Genetics and Human Diversity, The Origin and Spread of Civilization and Cultural Diffusion across the face of the Globe.

Deluge of Atlantis

Monday, January 26, 2015

Languages with a wide range of tone pitches have primarily developed in regions with high levels of humidity Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

IMAGE: Languages in humid regions of the Earth (light circles) are more often tonal languages (red) than in dry regions. view more

Credit: MPI f. Psycholinguistics/ Roberts

This news release is available in German.
The weather impacts not only upon our mood but also our voice. An international research team including scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Psycholinguistics, Evolutionary Anthropology and Mathematics in the Sciences has analysed the influence of humidity on the evolution of languages. Their study has revealed that languages with a wide range of tone pitches are more prevalent in regions with high humidity levels. In contrast, languages with simpler tone pitches are mainly found in drier regions. This is explained by the fact that the vocal folds require a humid environment to produce the right tone.
The tone pitch is a key element of communication in all languages, but more so in some than others. German or English, for example, still remain comprehensible even if all words are intonated evenly by a robot. In Mandarin Chinese, however, the pitch tone can completely change the meaning of a word. "Ma" with a level pitch means "mother," while "ma" with a falling then rising pitch would mean "horse". "Only those who hit the tone pitch correctly can express themselves in tonal languages," explains Seán G. Roberts, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen.
However, the climate can become a problem for the speakers of tonal languages, as the vocal folds in the larynx - commonly known as the voice box - suffer as a result. Even a temporary increase in humidity impacts upon the vocal folds: The humidity keeps the mucous membranes moist and makes them more elastic. It also changes the ion balance within the mucous membranes of the vocal folds. With good humidity, the vocal folds can oscillate sufficiently and produce the right tone.
The scientists therefore suspect that tonal languages are less common in dry regions as the wide range of tonal pitches is difficult to produce under these conditions and are more likely to result in misunderstanding. "Modern databases enable us to analyse the properties of thousands of languages. But this also brings problems because languages can also inherit their complex pitches from another language," says Damián E. Blasi, who conducts research at the Max Planck Institutes for Mathematics in the Sciences and for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. In their study, the scientists have now shown that these effects can be disentangled from the effects of climate.
The researchers investigated the correlation between humidity and the significance of tone pitch in over 3,750 languages from different linguistic families. This indicates that tonal languages are significantly rarer in dry regions. In relatively dry Central Europe, no tonal languages have developed like those found in the Tropics, Subtropical Asia and Central Africa.
Climate apparently shapes the role of pitch tone in a language and therefore how information is exchanged. Even small effects may be amplified over the generations to produce a global pattern. The climate thus determines the development of languages. "If the UK had been a humid jungle, English may also have developed into a tonal language," explains Roberts.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

This is a story that is currenntly being heavily promoted. It is not only highly misleading, the conclusions being touted as definitive are not only not reliable, they are almost certainly false:

DNA Analysis of the Paracas Skulls Proves They Are Not Human
On the southern coast of Peru lies the desert peninsula of Paracas. This barren landscape is where Peruvian archaeologist Julio Tello made an astounding discovery in 1928. His efforts uncovered a massive and complex graveyard buried under the sand and rocks.
In these tombs Tello found some of the most controversial human(?) remains in history. The bodies had the largest elongated skulls in the world and have since been called the Paracas skulls. Tello found a total of more than 300 skulls and they have been dated at around 3,000 years old. A recent DNA analysis performed on some of those skulls has presented amazing results that could challenge the current perspective of the human evolutionary tree.

Several other cultures have practiced skull elongation or deformation but the techniques they used produced different results. Certain South American tribes used to bind infants’ skulls in order to change their shape. Binding the head between pieces of wood modified the appearance of skulls by applying constant pressure over a long period of time. This type of cranial deformation changed the shape but it did not alter the size, weight or cranial volume; these are all standard characteristics of a regular human skull.
The Paracas skulls are different. Their craniums are 25% larger and 60% heavier than regular human skulls [this claim has been shown to be erroneous, it does not compare averages, it takes extreme measures of the Paracas crania and measures against the average, which is a loaded and fallacious comparison] which led researchers to believe they couldn’t have been modified through binding. They are also structurally different and only have one parietal plate as opposed to the two normally found in human skulls.[This statement is completely false and displays ignorance not only of how human skulls normally grow but even of the standard terminology that should have been used] These differences have deepened the decade-old mystery around the Paracas skulls and researchers haven’t been able to explain their origins.
The director of the Paracas History Museum has sent samples from 5 skulls to undergo genetic testing. The samples consisted of hair, skin, teeth and fragments of skull bones. The genetic laboratory was not informed about the samples’ origins in order to avoid biased or influenced results. The results were fascinating.
The mitochondrial DNA (inherited from the mother) presented mutations unknown to any man, primate or any other animal. The mutations suggested we are dealing with a completely new human-like being, very distant from Homo sapiens, Neanderthals or Denisovans. The Paracas individuals were so biologically different from humans they wouldn’t have been able to interbreed. “I am not sure it will even fit into the known evolutionary tree”, one ["One and the same"] geneticist added.
The implications of this discovery are huge. Who were the mysterious Paracas people? Did they evolve here on Earth on a path so different from us that they ended up looking drastically different? If not, where did they come from? Are any of them left?
This breakthrough brings up more questions than it answers but counts as another piece of evidence suggesting that we are not alone.

OK, we have a situation here: the Anthropologists cited are not qualified to make the remarks attributed to them, the Anatomists cited are not qualified to make the claims attributed to them and the Geneticist cited is not qualified to make the claims attributed to them.
Human skull bones are not automatically fully formed as the baby comes out of the womb, the skull is made up of a number of smaller disjointed pieces which grow around the edges as the child develops. Some of these separate pieces fuse together as part of the normal process and form single bones from more than one original piece. Fusion of the skull bones is normal to some degree and some skulls can continue the fusion as an adult until the suture lines are grown over by bone. The argument that "There is only one parietal bone" is not only wrong and misleading, it is actually an absurd and ridiculous claim.The lab which was given the samples knew what they were testing and had already pre-determined what their results would be before the tests were even run. The statements about the DNA test results were made by another source that was in charge of the DNA analysis. I have a Facebook Friend who was formerly associated with the lab and who was closely and personally connected to its director, and the director is the person that issued comments about the DNA not matching anything else. The former associate told me "I really doubt if they ran any tests at all, they already knew the outcome they wanted to announce." The director of this DNA lab has a long long history of not doing the work that was given to them, making misrepresentations about fraudulent business practices and claiming results from DNA tests not actually performed by the lab, and of making exaggerated claims that go against what is already known to be true about how DNA works which have never been verified by anyone else. In this case they are showing their ignorance when they claim that new mutations prove an alien origin: mutations are different from the ancestral DNA anyway, that is why they are mutations. There is no way that you can go from there to say they mean the mutations came from an otherworldly source and you basically have to test the DNA against all other known DNA in order to make the claim that "This DNA does not match anything known on Earth." We already know this was NOT done and in fact we can take it as a given that there was no way they could have either the time or the resources to even begin to do such a thing.http://doubtfulnews.com/2014/02/foerster-pye-and-ketchum-collaborate-paracas-elongated-skull-exposed-its/http://www.peruthisweek.com/blogs-calm-down-the-paracas-skulls-are-not-from-alien-beings-102258http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_cranial_deformation

These are some reconstructions that were done on a Paracas skull for the National Geographic feature. They are very well done, reliable and authentic, unlike the claims being made about the DNA by the persons cited in the article and the video. I should emphasize here that the unusual claims are originating in only two or three individuals who are merely very vocal in advancing their claims.

70,000 year-old African settlement unearthed

During ongoing excavations in northern Sudan, Polish archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology in Poznań, have discovered the remains of a settlement estimated to 70,000 years old. This find, according to the researchers, seems to contradict the previously held belief that the construction of permanent structures was associated with the so-called Great Exodus from Africa and occupation of the colder regions of Europe and Asia.

The site known as Affad 23, is currently the only one recorded in the Nile Valley which shows that early Homo sapiens built sizeable permanent structures, and had adapted well to the wetland environment.
This new evidence points to a much more advanced level of human development and adaptation in Africa during the Middle Palaeolithic.

Locating the “village”

“Discoveries in Affad are unique for the Middle Palaeolithic. Last season, we came across a few traces of light wooden structures. However, during the current research we were able to precisely locate the village and identify additional utility areas: a large flint workshop, and a space for cutting hunted animal carcasses, located at a distance” – explained project director Dr. Marta Osypińska.
The researchers are also working on a list of animal species that these early humans hunted. Despite the relatively simple flint tools produced using the Levallois technique, these humans were able to hunt both large, dangerous mammals such as hippos, elephants and buffalo, as well as small, nimble monkeys and cane rats (large rodents that inhabited the wetlands).

Palaeolithic hunters

This year, the researchers intended to precisely date the time period in which the Palaeolithic hunters lived here, using optically stimulated luminescence.
“At this stage we know that the Middle Palaeolithic settlement episode in Affad occurred at the end of the wet period, as indicated by environmental data, including the list of hunted animal species. But in the distant past of the land such ecological conditions occurred at least twice” about 75 millennia and about 25 millennia ago. Determining the time when people inhabited the river bank near today’s Affad is the most important objective of our project “- said prehistory expert Piotr Osypiński.
The Polish team is working with scientists from Oxford Brookes University, who are helping to analyse the geological history of the area. The results will help determine climatic and environmental conditions that prevailed in the Central Nile Valley during the late Pleistocene and hope to identify factors that contributed to the excellent state of preservation at the Affad 23 site.
Source: PAP

These were definitely in place before the post-Toba Out of Africa movement

I had this map prepared to illustrate the results of the Atlantis Empire invasion that Plato was talking about, but while I had it in storage the text was lost. However these are the two sites that are marked with an asterisk and which seem to indicate the results of a violent invasion at the end of the Ice Age. In the New World the effects are less obvious archaeologically but there are clear signs that the male side of the descendants came from a transatlantic R Y-DNA group that replaced whatever older males that might have been present in the older populations.

The middle aged Sicilian woman was struck by arrows from the side

about 10000 years ago during the Epipaleolithic (reconstruction at the local museum)

Skeletons-from-Jebel-Sahaba-Sahara, two victims of the massacre of at least 24 people at the same time in a conflict between two distinct ethnic groups and which resulted in the introduction of a new farming and herding economy at the end of the last Ice Age

Two late Paleolithic (Epigravettian at ca 11000 BC) bodies of this kind are known from Italy. One, from San Teodoro cave in Sicily, was a woman with a flint point in her right iliac crest. This artifact was designed as a triangle and was most probably an arrow point. The other was a child with a flint in its thoracic vertebra, found in late Epigravettian layers of the Grotta dei Fanciulli (the famous Grotte des Enfants) at Balzi-Rossi / Grimaldi, on the LIgurian Italian / French border.
The most remarkable discovery of late Paleolithic Age comes from Jebel Sahaba, a few kilometers north of Wadi Halfa on the east bank of the Nile. A graveyard (ca 10000 BC) containing 59 burials was located on a hill overlooking the Nile. Twenty-four skeletons had flint projectile points that were either embedded in the bones or found within the grave fill in positions which indicated they had penetrated the bodies. The excavator of the site, Fred Wendorf (The prehistory of Nubia, II p. 991) wrote: ” The most impressive feature is the high frequency of unretouched flakes and chips. In a normal assemblage all of these would be classified as debitage or debris and none would considered tools. Yet many of these pieces were recovered from positions where their use as parts of weapons were irrefutable”. joteIn total, more than 40% of the men, woman and children in the commentary had died by violence. Fred Wendorf, suggested that environmental pressure and vanishing resources on the end of the Pleistocene were the causes of violence, but this remains only one hypothesis. A detailed analysis of the skeletons with nowadays methods (dna-analysis, stable isotopes) is missing till now. If war is defined as organized aggression between autonomous social units, the archaeological record at Jebel Sahaba may indeed indicate the presence of an early war.
Coming back to the European Record, at Ofnet cave in Bavaria two pits contained the skulls and vertebrae of thirty-eight individuals, all stained with red ochre, dating to around 8-9000 BC (Orschiedt 1998). The Ofnet finding most probably represents a massacre, which wiped out a whole community and was followed by the ceremonial burial of skulls. Most of the victims of deadly attacks were children; two-thirds of the adults were females, which led to the suggestion, that a temporary absence of males may have been the precipitating cause of the attack. Half the individuals were wounded before death by blunt mace-like weapons, with males and females and children all injured, but males having the most wounds.

This blog has been hacked and I have not been able to add anything or edit it for most of the calendar year 2014. Nor have I been able to get into the comments to read them or approve them

We can just say I've been on Sabbatical since I started writing on most of these subjects in Yahoo discussion groups and that was at least seven years ago.

If I can get the blogs going again I shall be doing extensive editing of older posts and rewriting. Currently the blogs are being run on Facebook. I shall have to see if I can get the regular blogs on blogger back under control again.

My readers are still in there and showing much support. I am grateful for that part
Thank you.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

From the PNAS in 2012. This has the same Carbon-14 dating problem that everything else from that horizon has and there is a strong possibility that such an impact drastically altered the atmospheric balance of Carbon isotopes :PNAS July 10, 2012 vol. 109 no. 28

Very high-temperature impact melt products as evidence for cosmic airbursts and impacts 12,900 years ago

Abstract

It has been proposed that fragments of an asteroid or comet impacted Earth, deposited silica-and iron-rich microspherules and other proxies across several continents, and triggered the Younger Dryas cooling episode 12,900 years ago. Although many independent groups have confirmed the impact evidence, the hypothesis remains controversial because some groups have failed to do so. We examined sediment sequences from 18 dated Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) sites across three continents (North America, Europe, and Asia), spanning 12,000 km around nearly one-third of the planet. All sites display abundant microspherules in the YDB with none or few above and below. In addition, three sites (Abu Hureyra, Syria; Melrose, Pennsylvania; and Blackville, South Carolina) display vesicular, high-temperature, siliceous scoria-like objects, or SLOs, that match the spherules geochemically. We compared YDB objects with melt products from a known cosmic impact (Meteor Crater, Arizona) and from the 1945 Trinity nuclear airburst in Socorro, New Mexico, and found that all of these high-energy events produced material that is geochemically and morphologically comparable, including: (i) high-temperature, rapidly quenched microspherules and SLOs; (ii) corundum, mullite, and suessite (Fe3Si), a rare meteoritic mineral that forms under high temperatures; (iii) melted SiO2 glass, or lechatelierite, with flow textures (or schlieren) that form at > 2,200 °C; and (iv) particles with features indicative of high-energy interparticle collisions. These results are inconsistent with anthropogenic, volcanic, authigenic, and cosmic materials, yet consistent with cosmic ejecta, supporting the hypothesis of extraterrestrial airbursts/impacts 12,900 years ago. The wide geographic distribution of SLOs is consistent with multiple impactors.

A physico-anthropological
study of skeletal material from Neolithic age to Hellenistic times in Central
Greece and surrounding region

I have located the text of George Panagiaris important 1993 doctoral thesis on
Greek skeletal material. This may be one of the most comprehensive efforts to
study the Ancient Greek population from a physical anthropological perspective
(413 male and 354 female crania, using 65 biometric characters as well
odontological traits).

Panagiaris' conclusions in English can be found in
p.10 of the document. He confirms that the greater period of discontinuity in
the material is observed during the Helladic
period (=Bronze Age in Greek archaeology), where broad-headed incoming groups
appear, side by side with the older Mediterranean population.He attributes this to the arrival of such people
from the highlands Pindos range, although he sees the possibility of Anatolian
influences as well, but has no comparative data. He cites the tendency for
broader skulls in higher latitudes, although this general trend in H. sapiens
probably does not explain the local trend within Caucasoids where the key
difference is between mountaineers (where the Alpine, Dinaric, Armenoid, and
Pamir-Ferghana types are well-represented) and lowland folk. Perhaps, if
various ancient DNA projects manage to study some Greek material we may be able
to ascertain the events that were taking place in Greece at that
time.

Of course, the issue cannot be seen in
isolation, because at this time we see an increase in brachycephalic types in Crete and Anatolia, the appearance of the intrusive
brachycephalic Bell Beaker folk in Western Europe, and perhaps even the presence
of the interfluvial type (Pamir-Ferghana type) in the eastern Saka.

Personally, I see something importantin these developments: why would broad-headed
mountaineers make their appearance in the lowlands at this time in history?
I am strongly leaning towards the idea that this has to do with metallurgical
innovation during this time. According to Roberts et
al. (2009), from which the figure on the left [above]is taken:

Metallurgy in Eurasia originated in Southwest Asia
due to the widespread adoption of, and experimentation in, pyrotechnology and
the desire for new materials to serve as aesthetic visual displays of identity,
whether of a social, cultural or ideological nature. This can be
demonstrated through the early use of metal for jewellery and the use of
ore-based pigments along with the continued use of stone, bone, and other
materials for most tools. The subsequent appearance of metals throughout Eurasia
is due to the acquisition of metal objects by individuals and communities
re-inventing traditions of adornment, even in regions hundreds of kilometres
from the nearest sources of native metals or ores. The movement of
communities possessing metallurgical expertise to new ore sources and into
supportive societies led to the gradual transmission of metallurgy across the
Eurasian landmass. By the second millennium BC, metallurgy had spread across
Eurasia, becoming firmly rooted in virtually all inhabitable areas (Sherratt
2006). The ability to smelt different ores, create different metals or increase
metal production did not occur in a linear evolutionary fashion throughout
Eurasia, but rather appeared sporadically over a vast area – a result of
regional innovations and societal desires and demands.

There is no evidence to suggest that metallurgy was
independently invented in any part of Eurasia beyond Southwest Asia. The
process of metallurgical transmission and innovation created a mosaic of
(frequently diverse) metallurgical traditions distinguished by form, composition
and production techniques. It is within this context that innovations such as
the earliest working of gold in the Balkans or the sudden emergence of
distinctive tin-bronze working in Southeast Asia should be seen.

[This ignores the independent evidence for copper and gold metallurgy in Western Europe, especially the Southern Iberian Peninsula, where some of the evidence has been stated to be equally as old. I do also note that in the second map the Southern Iberian area has been darkened (is older) and is indicated to be separate from the larger areas of activity in the East-DD]

The richest ore deposits were found in mountain areas as Thornton (2009) makes clear:

Models for the development of metallurgy in Southwest
Asia have for a long time been focussed on research carried out in the lowland
regions of the Levant and Mesopotamia. These models do not take into account
the different developmental trajectories witnessed in the resource-rich
highlands of Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Iran. In this paper, the beginnings
of the use and production of metals in Iran will be juxtaposed with a cursory
overview of the lowland model (the ‘Levantine Paradigm’) in order to highlight
these differences. By synthesizing data from a number of current research
projects exploring the early metallurgy of the Iranian Plateau, this paper
demonstrates how at least one of the highland regions of Southwest Asia was
at the very forefront of technological innovation from the seventh through the
second millennium BC.

I had planned to write a separate post
on the interplay between metallurgy and the rise in social complexity that led
to the spread of (at least some branches of-) Indo-European and Semitic during
time, but this is probably as good a place as any to summarize the
argument:

The practice of metallurgy launched the first
globalization: in order to produce high quality metal objects, one needed a
variety of specialized workers: prospectors, miners, metalworkers. The
necessary ores do not occur everywhere on the map, and production
requires a complex logistic operation to manage resources and talent. One
needed, in addition, to establish a network of traders and warriors to
carry out and supervise the trade, since demand for metal objects was wide
and not limited to the vicinity of their production.

Production and
trade networks facilitated the flow of ideas, and necessitated the flow of
peoples, both because expertise was non-local, and also because the producers
wanted to supervise their profitable business. There is an advantage to being
an early adopter of new technology; many of the shifts in power in world
history depended on a technology differential (European guns in the New World,
mounted archers on the Eurasian steppe, triremes in the Mediterranean,
Macedonian long-spears vs. Persian light infantry being some
examples).

The technology differential eventually dissipates as everyone
gets access to the new inventions. This process may take several centuries, but
in the meantime those monopolizing them enjoy a triple advantage:

There is demand for their product

They have the better weapons

They are part of broader communities that can muster resources against
anyone who crosses them

It is no accident that the Bronze Age started
with technological innovation and ended up in a series of military conflicts.
What began as a transformation of Neolithic communities by monopolizing guilds
of the bearers of the new technologies ended up with everyone having access to
them, and of course they went to war.

Getting back to the topic of
Panagiaris' dissertation, I might try my hand at translating some interesting
portions. These will be posted as updates in the space below.

Above is an Olmec "Potbellied" figure and looking very similar to statues associated with the Megalithic period of Southeast Asia and then again more recent "tiki" statues of Polynesia: similar statues also appear in the Archaeological record of South America.

I had just been noticing stylistic similarities between the Olmecs and older Polynesians in the jade work when I started seeing that some of the themes and subject matter were also the same. For one thing, some of the little jade human figures were evidently meant to represent fetuses (as are also the Hei Tikis of New Zealand) and some of the jade spirals were meant to be dragons (Taniwhas).

Saturday, August 2, 2014

This is a matter we have discussed before on the blog. The date is Younger Dryas and it is subject to a known vacillation in the Carbon-14 proportion. The direct dating of this event is about 10000-11000 BP (and not BC) without using the so-called correction factor, which ignores the known vacillation in C 14 at the time. -DD

The first race war? Scientists investigating after 13,000-year-old bodies are discovered on the edge of the Sahara

Skeletons from first human massacre will be displayed at British Museum

Published: 00:03 EST, 14 July 2014 | Updated: 07:25 EST, 14 July 2014 Humans remains of people killed 13,000 years ago in what scientists believe is the oldest identified race war, are today due to go on display at the British Museum in London. Two skeletons from a massacre in the Sahara desert in 11,000BC, which killed at least 26 people, will be shown in the new Ancient Egypt gallery, alongside the flint-tipped weapons with which they were killed.French scientists have been working with the museum to examine dozens of skeletons that were found grouped together in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery - one of the earliest organised burial grounds - on the east bank of the Nile, northern Sudan, in the 1960s.

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A pair of skeletons belonging to people who were killed on a massacre 13,000 years ago as the result of climate change, are going on show in the British Museum, London. Pencils pinpoint out pieces of weaponry responsible for their demise

They believe the remains of the 60 individuals found - around half of which had cut marks on their bones - represent the first communal violence between groups.

Fighting probably broke out because of the environmental disaster of the Ice Age, which caused the attackers and victims to live together in a smaller area, the experts explained.

THE DISCOVERY AT JEBEL SAHABA CEMETERY

The cemetery was discovered in 1965. It contained at least 61 individuals dating back about 13,000 years ago.The graveyard is one of the earliest formal cemeteries in the world.Prior to the discovery, only isolated graves, or clusters of up to three bodies had been known within the Nile Valley, experts at the British Museum write in a blog post.Out of the 61 skeletons found buried at the site, at least 45 per cent of them died from inflicted wounds.The remains are the earliest evidence for inter-communal violence in the archaeological record.Fragments of arrows and weapons were found alongside the bodies – with some weapons embedded in the bones. Cut marks were also found on the bones.

Renee Friedman, the museum's curator of early Egypt, told The Times that the attackers and victims were hunter-gatherers who usually avoided violence by moving on when a certain area became overcrowded.

But she believed that the cold and dry conditions of the Nile valley around that time caused a 'population crisis', as more people moved to the same area surrounded by desert.

She said: 'Things were probably very tight, so we think that people started picking on one another.'The museum acquired the remains in 2002 when they were donated by Fred Wendorf, an American archaeologist who excavated the site in the 1960s.At least 60 individuals were found and examined using modern technology. One body was found with 39 pieces of flint from arrows and other flint-tipped weapons, Dr Friedman said.

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French scientists have been working with The British Museum to examine dozens of skeletons that were found grouped together in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery. An image of excavations at Jebel Sahaba in 1965 is pictured

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The cemetery was discovered in 1965. It contained at least 61 individuals dating back about 13,000 years ago. The graveyard (illustrated showing the position in which the skeletons were found,) is one of the earliest formal cemeteries in the world

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They believe the remains of the 60 individuals found (a skull is pictured) represent the first communal violence between groups because almost half the remains have cut marks on them

As well as the human remains, the display will include flint arrowhead fragments and a healed forearm fracture, which was most likely sustained by a victim who was trying to defend himself during conflict.

Over the past two years, anthropologists from Bordeaux University have managed to find dozens of previously undetected conflict marks on the victims' bones.The British Museum scientists are now planning to research more about the victims themselves, including their gender, their age and their diet.Meanwhile, according to The Independent, work carried out at Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Alaska and New Orleans’ Tulane University suggests these humans were part of the general sub-Saharan originating population, who were ancestors of modern Black Africans.[The attackers were called Mediterranean Whites by excavators and they came down the Nile from the North-DD]Dr. Daniel Antoine, a curator in the British Museum’s Ancient Egypt and Sudan Department, told the paper: 'The skeletal material is of great importance – not only because of the evidence for conflict, but also because the Jebel Sahaba cemetery is the oldest discovered in the Nile valley so far.'

WHY DID FIGHTING BEGIN?

Experts think that climate change sparked the violence.Ice Age glaciers covering much of Europe and North America at this time made the climate in Egypt and Sudan cold and arid, forcing people to live near the Nile.But the river was either wild or low and sluggish.There was little land on which people to live safely and resources were scarce.Competition for food may have been the reason for the violence as more groups of people had to stake a claim on the best fishing spots and sites to live.Two other cemeteries found nearby the main site suggest other social units, or small tribes, also considered the area their home and this may have caused friction.But the remains buried in the other graveyards show no signs of violence. So people buried in ‘Cemetery 117’ were either unlucky, or the resting place was chosen for people who dies of battle wounds.

The cemetery where the remains were discovered in the 1960s is one of the earliest organised burial grounds in the world and lies on the east bank of the Nile, northern Sudan (marked)

Human remains from the first known human massacre which scientists believe was carried out in 11,000BC during the Ice Age are due to go on display today for the first time at the British Museum in Londond

[At the end of the Ice Age and during the Mesolithic we have two sites with clear evidence of invasion and massacre, one in Europe at Ofnet, Bavaria, and this one in the valley of the Nile. Both are associated with the same ethnic type of invaders that are elsewhere identified as Atlanteans. both of them are very telling.-DD]REFERENCE

http://chauvetdreams.co.uk/2014/07/peru-150-mummies-of-ancient-unknown-civilisation-discovered-in-atacama-desert/These burials are contemporary with the early Mayan period and the Dark Ages of Europe before the Viking Age. Some of the material is probably even older than that. -DD

A team of archaeologists from universities in Poland, Peru and Colombia have discovered 150 mummies in the Atacama Desert belonging to an unknown culture that predate the Tiwanaku and Inca civilization by almost 500 years.
The bodies were mummified naturally by being buried directly in the sand with no stone structures, wrapped in cotton veils, reed mats or fishing nets, and radiocarbon dating shows that the oldest mummies came from 4th century AD, while the youngest mummies came from 7th century AD.

Mummies of an unknown culture found buried in the Tambo River delta.

One mummy has a bow and all are wrapped in shrouds and mats.Project Tambo, University of Wrocław.

Close-up of a mummy buried with some small objectsProject Tambo, University of Wrocław

The Tiwanaku civilisation is believed to have existed between 500AD and 1,000 AD, covering much of what is Peru and Chile today.
Under Project Tambo, the team have been excavating in the Tambo River delta in the northern region of the Atacama Desert since 2008 and the first mummies were found in 2012, but it took until March 2014 for the team to make major discoveries.

A shroud covering a mummy in the Tambo River deltaProject Tambo, University of Wrocław

A mummy buried with assorted grave goods, including a beautifully painted potProject Tambo, University of Wrocław

Together with the bodies in individual graves, the archaeologists found numerous grave goods, such as weapons like bows and quivers with arrows tipped with obsidian heads, and maces with stone or copper finials.
There were also richly decorated weaving tools, jewellery made from tumbaga (a gold and copper alloy) and copper, reed withes attached to the ears of the dead and beautiful intact pottery.

A collection of pottery and other grave goodsProject Tambo, University of Wrocław

According to Professor Józef Szykulski, leader of the research project from University of Wrocław, the mummies are of virtually unknown people, and the bows are a particularly interesting find that possibly symbolised power, which could mean that people buried in the Tambo River delta were nobility or the society’s elite.

A close-up of the mummy buried with a bow, which is possibly a symbol of powerProject Tambo, University of Wrocław

“Bows are extremely rare among the finds from the area of Peru. We have seen them however, in areas further south like Chile and further east in Amazonia. The issue, however, requires a deeper study,” Szykulski tells IBTimes UK.
In one grave, the archaeologists even found the remains of a llama, which would mean that the animal had been brought to the region much earlier than previously thought.
“Llama burials are quite common in the pre-Columbian cultures,” says Szykulski.
“We learned a lot about what equipment had been used, such as baskets and fishing nets, what these people were doing, which was agriculture and fishing, how they dressed, what ornaments they wore and even how they combed their hair.”

Some of the jewellery recovered from the burialsProject Tambo, University of Wrocław

The Polish archaeologists will be returning to Peru in October for further excavations, both in the cemetery where they found the unknown mummies, and in an adjacent cemetery where burials belonging to individuals from the Tiwanaku civilisation were found.
The Tiwanaku people were not believed to have ventured as far as the Tambo River delta, and the discovery of these tombs will help to increase understanding of pre-Columbian civilisations in Peru.

A mummy in a curled up position, which seems to have an elongated skullProject Tambo, University of Wrocław

Project Tambo is a joint effort between University of Wrocław, University of Szczecin, University of Poznań, University of Silesia, the Archaeological Museum in Głogów, Universidad Católica de Santa Maria in Arequipa, Universidad Nacional in Ica, the Universidad Central in Bogota (Colombia), Jagiellonian University and the University of Łódź

Genevieve Von Petzinger has been doing some very exciting work which goes a long way toward confirming my own suspicions derived from independant study (The equivalent material has been lying around my library in unpublished manuscript form for the last 20 years or so). Basically, her thesis is that all rock art worldwide contains certain regularly recurring symbols which are probable forerunners to later written records, and that they seem to have come Out of Africa along with the last great migration at the beginning of the Cro-Magnon period in Europe.

My additional comments include: The same symbols are also found in Australia and the Americas, from the oldest rock art and carried forward from that point. Some of the signs definitely occurred in the Neolithic as "Pottery signs", some were definitely being used in Egypt from before the development of Hieroglyphics, and some of them were incorporated into later regular alphabets that continue to be used. Several of these symbols are the same as appear on the Azilian pebbles. This does also connect up with Alexander Marshak's theories about astronomical notations since some of the symbols are associated with such notation (Some of them even greatly resemble later Roman Numerals and they include regular and repeated use of the signs I,V and X)
Many of these symbols are associated with Megalithic culture (eg, cupmarks) and it has been suggested that several signs are tracing shapes which appear to the eyes automatically during drug-induced hallucinations and trance states. In early Europe this has been linked to the use of the Amanita muscaria mushroom: in other areas other drugs must have been substituted.
As far as patterns of diffusion go, the distribution includes both TransAtlantic and TransPacific continuities and both were definitely accomplished facts before the end of the Ice Ages in the Younger Dryas event.

For further information please follow these links:
http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/geometric_signs/geometric_signs.php
http://www.ancientlosttreasures.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=171&t=1850

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